In Richmond, California, a slate of progressive candidates faced off against a challenge from pro-business candidates backed to the tune of more than $3 million by the energy giant Chevron. For years, Chevron has treated Richmond like a company town and its large refinery there has been a constant source of health and safety concerns.

Hungarian environmentalists had been trying to create an authentic Green Party ever since the end of Communism. When they pulled together a new initiative on 2009, they didn't call it a Green Party. Instead, they wanted to transform the entire process of doing politics in the country. The name of the party said it all: Politics Can Be Different.

Protect the environment and all the awesome potential of the United States can be achieved. Lose focus on the environment and the rug will be pulled from posterity's future. It won't matter if the grandkids are gay, duck hunters, or America's Idol. They're all gonna need clean air...

We hear the haunting yet absurd steps taken by the NSA to monitor citizens. Unfortunately for activists, revolutionaries, and other agents of social change, that's only the "state" prong of surveillance.

In what should be another colossal embarrassment for the United States -- recently leaked internal documents show how little our government is prepared to take responsibility for the damage done by climate change.

Between them, doctors Jill Stein and Margaret Flowers have been arrested nine times. In the face of injustice in America, rather than look the other way and stick to practicing medicine, they decided to do something about it.

Asher Platts, known to many of you through his work as the Punk Patriot, joins the Resistance Report team to give us the story behind the story of how grassroots - no pun- organizing helped bring legalized Marijuana to Maine.

In the early days of the changes in 1989, a new kind of politics emerged within the opposition movements poised to enter parliaments and governments. Many dissidents had a deep distrust of political parties and of political compromise.

Small parties have obstacles at the federal level. The major parties have inexhaustible funds and internal support. A third-party candidate can't compete against those forces. If smaller, more agile, parties are to compete at the national level, they will first need to succeed locally.

In explaining the fall of Communism, most analysts talk about pressure from the inside (dissidents) coupled with pressure from the outside (Gorbachev, Reagan). But equally important were the inside-outsiders.

The president opened his speech with a poetic tribute to the Apollo program, a generational mission championed by President John F. Kennedy more than half a century ago. But no comparison can be made between Kennedy's bold vision and Obama's timid plan.

Stein made a full recovery, but she was never the same when it came to how she wanted to run her life. She transitioned from trying to make change as a non-partisan educator and physician to a full-fledged advocate. Ten years later, she entered politics with the Green Party.

The Democrats of today are not the champions of labor and the enemies of high finance like they were in the days of FDR. Rather, today's Democratic Party is a center-right version of the Republican Party -- just as corrupt, but not inherently evil.